Laxana Paskaran, Michelle Guo, and Lola Waheed

Detroit, Mich. ‐ Rashida Tlaib approached the door with an effervescent smile on her face, “Hi baby!” she said to a mother holding her child as she cracked the door open.

Tlaib’s charm was effusive as she knocked on more than 50 doors in three hours on Monday to help get out the vote.’

Talib will make history as the first Palestinian-American woman elected to the U.S. Congress. She will be one of two of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, alongside Somali-American Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

The single mother of two boys is running unopposed for Michigan’s 13th Congressional District. The district includes the Westside of Wayne County, Downriver, and Detroit.

“My dad used to drive that car!” Tlaib exclaimed when a chocolate brown and black striped van backed out of a driveway.

The Detroit native is the oldest of 14 children and completed her schooling in the city. She attended Southwestern High School, completed her BA in Political Science at Wayne University in 1998, and law school at Thomas Cooley Law School in 2004.

That is to say, she’s quite familiar with the area and its people.

“What’s the kindest woman doing walking through an alley?” one of two local landscapers asked when they saw Tlaib approach them.

Tlaib’s campaign worked to address and push back against this stark gap.

“You guys promise me! You guys promise to vote. And don’t forget to flip the ballot,” she says to indicate to vote for Michigan’s Proposition 3 to the workers.

“We got you, we got you,” they responded with enthusiasm.

Prop 3 tackles voter suppression by increasing access to the polls.

“Don’t forget to vote yes on three. You gotta make sure because we got to prepare for 2020. And the way to prepare for 2020 is to make sure we all have access to the polls,” Tlaib explained to her Facebook live viewers.

The ballot includes the straight ticket voting option, statewide election audits, automatic voter registration, no-reason absentee voting, right for military and overseas voters to get absentee ballots.

Tlaib also wants to tackle the issue of minimum wage.

People in the service industry are paid based on the tip wage but there is a lot of talk about one fair wage for everyone, Tlaib told her constituents.

Tipped workers earn only $2.13 an hour as mandated by the U.S. federal government, which historically started during the Jim Crow era, Tlaib added.

Many businesses didn’t want to pay freed African-American slaves a living wage thus, the tipped wage was what service workers were given.

It continues its modern day impact on minorities and women, who are overwhelmingly represented in the service industry.

Tlaib wants to change that by fighting for a $15 minimum wage for all workers and creating a proper living wage for those in the district.

Many people are drawn to Tlaib’s charm, including Oscar Arbulu, who is a field organizer with her campaign.

Arbulu was impressed by Tlaib because she stood up to U.S. President Donald Trump when he was a presidential nominee.

Tlaib interrupted his speech at the Cobo Center in 2016, asking him to return a military award he received because she believed he didn’t deserve it.

She was then escorted out by security.

.@RashidaTlaib talks about getting thrown out of a Trump rally (for asking him if he ever read the US constitution), the reality of being a Muslim in America, and the importance of knocking doors pic.twitter.com/xOl50igFO2